


Apocalypse Tableau

by wneleh



Category: Rhett & Link
Genre: End of the World, F/M, Gen, No Plot, No Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-07
Updated: 2016-05-07
Packaged: 2018-06-06 20:56:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6769591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wneleh/pseuds/wneleh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What it says on the label.  Just something I want to get out of my head so that I can write what I really want to write.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Apocalypse Tableau

He sits atop his hill, his back against a boulder, and tracks the dirt road west.

The boys – his older son, and Link’s – chase each other around the rise, slicing the air with sticks they’ve found somewhere.

In the desert? They must have brought them. “Grab what you’ll want this afternoon,” he’d told them, and, so, they had.

His son’s the better athlete, but Lincoln has, apparently, seen more sword-fights on the tube, or more at least viewed them more closely. “Watch you don’t put an eye out,” he calls, and the boys stop and look at him incredulously.

“Does it matter?” his son asks.

“You can bet it’d hurt,” he replies. 

Lincoln considers this. “Do you think _it_ will hurt?”

“Maybe it will start with our eyes,” says Locke, “then…”

“En garde!” says his opponent, and they are off again, tearing around the grounds.

His grounds. His hill. His desert bolt-hole, built and stocked to wait out any emergency. 

That’s what the brochure’d said.

He doesn’t see the Neals’ minivan until it’s quite close. Link is driving, his daughter riding shotgun, their wives in the middle row holding their youngest children in their laps. 

Not safe, not safe, and this is so unlike Link – unlike any of them. They must have figured, like the boys, that it really didn’t matter. But it matters to him… to have done anything that could risk them being all together for this…

The sliding doors open and the dogs run out, and now all the children are chasing the dogs, and the women wave and Christy has the rear hatch up and is pulling out a large ice chest, and Jessie is giving instructions about handwashing, and Link strides through the chaos and comes and sits next to him, close enough that their arms rub when he moves. “Two hours, they’re saying,” he says. “Want a sandwich?”

No. Yes. 

“Lily, make your uncle Rhett a sandwich!” Link yells. 

“Tell Rhett he can make his own sandwich,” Jessie replies, but Lily is on the case anyway – bologna sandwiches, pickles, chips, and Sprites for both of them. 

“It’d be a shame to waste it,” Lily says.

The kids, all five of them, run circles around them, the bigger kids letting the littler ones keep up. He wonders if they’ll stay close…

How come he keeps forgetting?

Link stays next to him; presently, Jessie and Christy join them, Christy settling to Link’s right, Jessie nudging space between his knees. 

“Love you, babe,” he whispers into her hair.

And then, the western sky turns black.

The children slow, then stop and turn and stare. The older boys pick up the dogs, then, oldest to youngest, they come, Lily into her mother’s arms, Locke against Jessie, Lincoln tucked somehow between him and Link, the little boys crowding in.

A tableau, awaiting the apocalypse.


End file.
